Sooner or Later Archives - Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources

Brendan McCarthy has taken to Facebook to plug the upcoming Dark Horse collection The Best of Milligan and McCarthy. He’s been using it to spread rather fetching memetic images from the classic strips in the book: so far, “Freakwave,” “Paradax” and “Skin” have gone up, presumably with similar designs for “Sooner or Later” and “Rogan Gosh” to follow.

I have to admit, I have a horse running in this race, because Brendan and Pete asked me to write an essay for the book, and it proved damned hard getting the reasons of why and how much I love this material down to less than a thousand words. Anyway, I feel jealous of anyone getting to experience this (inspirational, influential) material for the first time. It’s been downright criminal that its been out of print for so long. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll fall in love, you’ll walk funny for a week.

As it turns out, April will see the release of one of those collections that I’ve always wanted, but had pretty much given up all hope of ever seeing, as Nick Abadzis’ Hugo Tate gets a complete collection and – hopefully – the comic world will realize what an amazing, important comic it’s been missing out on for so long. But the fact that this series is finally getting re-released and just might get the attention and treatment it deserves has me thinking: What other long-vanished projects need this kind of return?

(Warning: Strong Brit-centric suggestions ahead. What can I say? Most of my formative comic experiences were either British or Marvel or DC…)